Great Day at Joe Mortimer Invite

The Frosh/Soph squad traveled to Orland Park's Turtlehead Lake Park to compete in the Joe Mortimer Invitational. The freshmen started us off with an incredible showing against a tough and deep field of quality opponents. They ran smartly as they avoided getting pulled out too fast and worked their way up continuously throughout the race. Joey Puccillo led the way to place 11th, covering the 2.3 mile course in 12:43. Only 7 seconds back was Nick Motuelle who placed 14th. Placing 21st and 22nd in 13:03-04 were Robert Del Cotto and Michael Joseph. For the 2nd meet in a row, Jordan D'Urso was our #5 man with his 36th place finish in 13:19, giving us a nice split of only 36 seconds between 1 & 5. Patrick Dunn was next with a top 50 finish placing 45th. Ryan Perry and Chris Neumann were both under 14 minutes placing 63rd and 65th... and impressive feat in a field of 225 finishers.  Ultimately, they ended up 3rd overall garnering a plaque for their efforts. The top two teams were a loaded Plainfield Central team that had 4 runners in the top 10 and Sandburg HS.

The sophomores stuck to their usual ways running a tight split on 5 and even 7 runners. They placed well, bringing home the 4th place plaque. While they boasted no runners in the top 25, they put 7 runners in between places 29-51. Colin Meyer led the way with an excellent 3 mile time of 17:39. Nolan Witt was 10 seconds back as our #2 followed by Luc Alvarez and Sam Hudec who both came through the finish with times of 17:59. Nick Novotny was our #5 but the race of the day may have been Angel Galvan who had a lifetime best run of 18:14. 

One of the really cool things they do at this meet is not only score out the Freshmen and Sophomore races individually, but they total up each school's total points from the two races combined. Out of the 40 schools in attendance, DGS would have been 2nd to Sandburg in the overall team competition illustrating the strength of the young groups in our program. 

We'll look for another big step forward tomorrow at Lockport and then off to the Naperville Twilight Meet next Wednesday where the athletes should take advantage of an opportunity to run some fast times.